I might say--"

But here the stranger, who had been wrinkling his brows and twisting
his mustaches with well-bred patience, took advantage of an oratorical
pause:--

"It grieves me, Sir Priest, to interrupt the current of your eloquence
as discourteously as I have already broken your meditations; but the day
already waneth to night. I have a matter of serious import to make with
you, could I entreat your cautious consideration a few moments."

Father Jose hesitated. The temptation was great, and the prospect
of acquiring some knowledge of the Great Enemy's plans not the least
trifling object. And if the truth must be told, there was a certain
decorum about the stranger that interested the Padre. Though well aware
of the Protean shapes the Arch-Fiend could assume, and though free from
the weaknesses of the flesh, Father Jose was not above the temptations
of the spirit. Had the Devil appeared, as in the case of the pious St.
Anthony, in the likeness of a comely damsel, the good Father, with his
certain experience of the deceitful sex, would have whisked her away
in the saying of a paternoster. But there was, added to the security of
age, a grave sadness about the stranger,--a thoughtful consciousness as
of being at a great moral disadvantage,--which at once decided him on a
magnanimous course of conduct.

The stranger then proceeded to inform him, that he had been diligently
observing the Holy Father's triumphs in the valley. That, far from
being greatly exercised thereat, he had been only grieved to see so
enthusiastic and chivalrous an antagonist wasting his zeal in a hopeless
work. For, he observed, the issue of the great battle of Good and Evil
had been otherwise settled, as he would presently show him. "It wants
but a few moments of night," he continued, "and over this interval of
twilight, as you know, I have been given complete control. Look to the
West."

As the Padre turned, the stranger took his enormous hat from his head,
and waved it three times before him. At each sweep of the prodigious
feather, the fog grew thinner, until it melted impalpably away, and the
former landscape returned, yet warm with the glowing sun. As Father Jose
gazed, a strain of martial music arose from the valley, and issuing
from a deep canyon, the good Father beheld a long cavalcade of gallant
cavaliers, habited like his companion. As they swept down the plain,
they were joined by like processions, that slowly defiled from every
r